In The News

Students Shun Native Tongue

Liu Qing November 11, 2005
As China becomes a market economy and an increasingly influential world power, Chinese students are showing a great interest in acquiring proficiency in the global lingua franca, English. University graduates are honing their skill in English in order to make themselves more attractive to prospective employers. But as Shanghai writer Liu Qing points out, this emphasis on English has emerged at...

International Migration: Brain Drain or Brain Gain?

Caglar Ozden October 31, 2005
The surge in globalization since the end of World War II has been fueled chiefly by an international exchange of goods and capital rather than people. There are signs, however, that international migrants are playing an increasingly important role in globalization as the world enters the twenty-first century. What are the costs and benefits of this new wave of migration? The principal cost of...

Painful Truth of the Call Centre Cyber Coolies

Amelia Gentleman October 31, 2005
Over the recent years, India’s ability to earn contracts from Western companies looking to outsource services has been seen as a globalization success story. Call centers, where Indian employees handle questions and offer support to Western consumers have become a major new industry in India, and have been portrayed as providing “good salaries and new career opportunities in the developing world...

The Fate of ‘Made in the USA’

Robert J. Samuelson October 28, 2005
The specter of declining industry has loomed over the USA in recent years. As the imperatives of free trade and globalization send jobs and factories across borders and beyond oceans, the American worker and the American CEO both recognize they’re in a bind. American manufacturing, once the hallmark of the nation’s booming business, now faces a tenuous future. Robert J. Samuelson, writing for...

Global Europe

Gordon Brown October 27, 2005
As European leaders meet at Hampton Court, British chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown writes about a need for a drastically new approach to the EU. After all, the EU was founded to make intra-European trade successful and to integrate the economies of the member countries, not specifically to deal with challenges from outside economic competitors. Brown argues that many of the EU's...

English Butler Leads China's Latest Cultural Revolution

Jonathan Watts October 26, 2005
The austere refinement and discreet assistance long associated with a traditional English butler is now a commodity available globally. In the past decade, Robert Watson has taken his business – training aspiring manservants in ettiquette, wine-tasting, table-dressing and other skills – to numerous continents. Watson's latest expansion is in the Far East, where Chinese authorities have...

China, India Superpower? Not so Fast!

Pranab Bardhan October 25, 2005
Every day, countless commentators prophesize the ascendance of the world's next superpowers, China and India, the two "Asian giants" shaking off their ancient slumber and rising to the call of the 21st century. According to popular punditry, their place in the firmament of globalization's success stories is already guaranteed. Yet economist Pranab Bardhan argues that a much...